Silver Nemesis

As usual, the reviews I read in here really surprise me sometimes. After having heard so much fan-bashing of this particular yarn, I'm amazed so many of you actually stood up for it here. 

I try to be of two legitimate minds regarding Silver Nemesis. I try to see the flaws so many critics have pointed out regarding this story and, at the same time, see all the fun and enjoyment there is out of just sitting back and enjoying the adventure. I fail miserably at the "seeing the flaws" aspect of the equation and just enjoy this story for what it is. An action tale that actually plays out pretty good. 

Yes, the weather is inaccurate for November. Yes, the humour is a bit hackneyed in places. Yes, it tries too hard to just play up being a "25th anniversary tale" (the whole "25th anniversary schtick" never sat well with me - I really preferred it when the show just celebrates the decades and that's it). I can see all that. I can even see the Cyberman not being able to hit the side of a barn in that one scene where Ace runs off. 

But still, overall, I really think this is a pretty good story. A bit weak by the standards of most the McCoy stories, but still pretty damned good overall. 

Obviously, the action sequences are some of the best parts. With the "Mexican stand-off" with Ace and the three Cybermen at the end being truly magnificent stuff that really re-inforces Ace as one of the great sci-fi heroines of the ages. In the old, sexist world of Who, this would have been either the Doctor or a male companion handling this. So great that it's a teenaged girl instead! 

The "deeper mysteries" that the story dwells upon are another excellent strongpoint to this story. The hints made about the Doctor's origins in "Remembrance" are so bloody subtle that you really almost don't catch them. It was nice for the mystery of the Doctor to get played up as much as it does in this story. Although I just stated a paragraph or two back that I wasn't a big fan of the whole "25th anniversary motif" that they were going for in this season, I do like that part of this plan was to re-invent the Doctor's past again and change him back into a bit of an enigma. And the emphasis on this in Nemisis is strong. It is still a bit of a crying shame that the "Cartmel Masterplan" could not be completed onscreen. "Lungbarrow" was an okay read but I would have liked to have seen at as a T.V. episode.

Next, we have the "players in the game" for the Silver Nemesis. The Nazis are a tad wooden (but then, Nazis would be, wouldn't they?) but I really enjoyed Peinforte and even the extremely gold-vulnerable Cybermen. The way the Doctor plays them off each other and manipulates them to his ultimate goals (he knew that Peinforte absorbing herself into the Nemesis would get the Validium to destroy the fleet even though the Cybermen cancelled his orders - did you catch that?) shows off, again, just how truly deadly he is as the "cosmic chess player". And shows it off in a different way than he did in Remembrance. By the way, in my book, there are enough differences in these two tales to say they're not entirely the same even though some of you love to harp on this idea. To me, the reason why there are so many similiarities between the two is because the Doctor wanted to set some things up that would "take a good chunk" out of his two worst enemies. And he knew that to entice them with some highly powerful Gallifreyan artefacts would be the best way to do it. And I can't believe how many of you love to bitch about these two stories resembling each other. Re-watch Season eight and see how each story is just the Master tampering with something he can't truly control, almost getting destroyed by it at the end and the Doctor steps in and saves the day on the spin of a coin! This was five stories in a row, more or less, plotted exactly the same. Why do I never hearing bitching about this?! 

Anyway, I digress. There are many truly wonderful moments in this story where I find myself in "geek paradise". The Cybermen hearing jazz on the transmitter, Ace and the Doctor stopping to enjoy the jazz themselves', the glorious moment where the Doctor "plays chess" with the Cybermen and activates Nemisis with the bow and then charges off. Those are just to name a few. But, what stops this story from being a true classic like Remembrance is that it also "clangs" quite badly in places too. The Nazis not bothering to see if the bow is still in the box being one of the worst ones. A bit reminiscent of Guy Crawford and the eyepatch in "Android Invasion"! 

Overall, I consider this a story with some very "classic moments" in it that don't quite come together properly enough to give it the rank of a "classic story". But, by no means do I consider it "shite" like some of the others on this page have!